Founded in 1980, it has two separate retail divisions, the General Store and Building Materials Exchange, which sell different types of items, which are dropped off daily by self-haulers.

They dumped many reusable items in a landfill, and a nonprofit organization unsuccessfully attempted to salvage them.

Urban Ore was formed by Dan Knapp and Mary Lou Van Deventer, a married couple, in 1980 to recover and sell reusable items.

The facility containing Urban Ore moved twice between 1981 and 1983 because the truck's drop-off point frequently changed.

[5] As a recycling operation was beneficial to the city, it allowed Urban Ore to have free rent at its current place and licensed access to salvaged goods until it reached over $11,000 monthly in income, when it could afford commercial rent.